Bullet with Butterfly Wings
by BrilliantDarkness
Summary: What is lost cannot be saved. What was taken cannot be reclaimed. All that is left is justice. Or vengeance.


"You'll pay for this, you know," the man simpered. "They'll come for you. You'll hang. You kill me and it's murder."

"Way I see it…ain't no way a dead man can commit murder. And if he can then it seems only right that he kill the man who killed him."

* * *

Jimmy woke in a cold sweat. Obviously he hadn't had enough to drink before he fell asleep. Enough whiskey could keep the memories at bay when he slept.

Nothing kept them away while he was awake. But awake he could focus on the anger and hate. Asleep all he could feel was the hurt. And it still did hurt. It hurt worse than anytime he'd ever been shot and it hurt as fresh as the day it happened.

He wished he could make himself wake when the dream started. It always started so sweet even though he knew where it was going. But it always ended the same. Her body limp in his arms, her blood soaking his clothes, her sweet final words exhaled with her last breath.

"Stay true…"

He understood even if not another on this earth would. Jimmy knew what she'd been trying to tell him. He wanted to do it too. For her. For his Ellie. For her memory, he wanted to do all she'd asked him. He wanted to believe as she had.

Her belief had been wrong though. There was nothing to believe in. Nothing really to stay true to. He'd known it even when he tried to delude himself otherwise and her death only proved it.

There was no longer a choice to be made. There was no more debate over what he needed to do. He just needed to set himself in motion to do it.

* * *

"You've got the wrong man. I've never killed anyone. I swear it."

"No…you kept your distance, didn't you? Kept your hands clean. Except for me. You killed me sure enough. Killed her too…and them…"

* * *

"I had to bribe the bandleader to declare a ladies' choice," the dulcet tone of a female voice sounded in his ear. Jimmy turned to find himself staring into the bluest eyes he thought he'd ever seen. They were sparkling with mirth. "I tried catching your eye, Marshal Hickok, but you kept looking away. It's my choice now and I'm asking you for a dance."

He had seen her smiling at him. Of course he had seen her before too. Only a blind man could have missed her. Or a dead one. She was beautiful. He had thought so anyway. As if her deep brown hair and eyes of a blue so intense as to verge on violet weren't enough, her smile compounded her beauty. And she was always smiling, it seemed.

And he had noticed her trying to catch his eye. He had even thought about going and asking what it seemed she wanted him to ask. But then something stopped him. That knowledge, that remembering of who he was and what that meant for anyone getting close to him. It had almost killed Lou…more than once. It had been the death of Rosemary. She might've had a death wish but he believed she'd have gotten past that if not for him.

Of course, it would be heartless and rude to deny her request at this point so he smiled his most charming smile and accepted. It was just a dance after all. There surely couldn't be any harm in just dancing with the girl.

He soon learned better. Ellie Morgan had her eyes on him and no was not an option. He didn't recall proposing and was pretty sure it's because he hadn't but somehow they had ended up married all the same. She was like no woman he'd met before. Emma and Lou had been tough as nails in their own ways but Emma was still a picture of propriety and Lou always seemed propelled by something not under her control.

Ellie knew her mind, knew her heart and knew his as well. He could never fool her, not for a minute. He tried to tell her that they couldn't be together, that he would only bring danger to her. But she'd laughed in his face.

"I don't believe that," she told him flatly. "You can choose who you are. If someone can make up a story to change your life then you can certainly live a story that changes it back."

* * *

"I told you…whoever you are...you have the wrong man."

"You can be sure that I do not."

The last was emphasized with a sharp kick to the ribs of the bound man lying helpless on the cave floor.

"I looked far and wide for you and now I got you. You are going to pay for what you've done."

* * *

For a while Jimmy thought Ellie might've been right too. He stayed on in that small town and kept the peace. He quit using the name Bill and insisted everyone call him Jimmy. By the time she was expecting their second child, Jimmy thought he had finally left Wild Bill in the dust.

The tears of relief came to him one night as he tucked their son into his bed. He turned swiftly and grabbed her, holding her tightly to him.

"Thank you," he'd whispered. "Thank you for being smarter than me. Thank you for seeing things I couldn't. Thank you for showing them to me. Thank you for him and for whoever that is in there."

She laughed deeply at that.

"Well, you were half of making him and this new one too."

"Wouldn't've been possible without you, your faith in me, in us, in…life."

She had laid her hand gently on the side of his face. He would never forget the look in her eyes. Never. If he lived to a thousand, her eyes, the hurt, the tenderness, the care, would haunt him every day.

"You're easy to have faith in," she whispered. "You've a good soul, a loving heart. You give me faith in all the rest."

* * *

He took another long pull from the bottle of whiskey. He tried to tamp down the memory before it went further. There were times when he actually liked remembering the good times. He loved remembering the look on Ellie's face when he suggested the name Aloysius for their son. And how she'd laughed at his expression the first time little Aloysius had spit up on him.

Simple and happy times and he cherished each and every one. He loved her. Of that he had no doubt but it wasn't just their love that meant so much to him. It was the life he never thought he could have.

* * *

"I don't suppose I could trouble you for a blanket? It's cold."

"If I wanted you warm, I'd've let you keep your clothes. Don't want to talk about the cold nights I've had on account of you."

"I don't even know who you are!"

"Don't you?"

The rope was yanked tighter elevating the nude man further off the ground, suspended by his wrists. He screamed as even more strain was put on his shoulders.

"Don't matter to me if you do or not. I figure I ain't the only one you did like this. But I promise I'll make sure you know me before you die."

* * *

"Hickok!"

The call made the blood run as ice in his veins. Jimmy'd been sitting at his desk with his feet propped upon it and his hat shielding his eyes. No doubt his deputies thought he was sleeping. Nothing could be further from the truth. He understood why this was so often Teaspoon's favorite position. It was fascinating the things he could learn when people thought he was asleep and therefore not listening.

His name growled in the street as it had just been was nothing he had ever wanted to hear again, however.

If this had been years ago, before he'd met his Ellie, he knew how he would handle it. He would saunter out and stare this man down. He'd outdraw him and the other man would be crumpling into the dirt of the main thoroughfare through the town before even being able to clear his gun from his holster.

But this was not years ago. This was not before Ellie. Ellie was home with Aloysius and, he hoped, resting a little. She was getting awful big with this new babe and he worried that she was overdoing.

"Wild Bill Hickok!"

Sighing heavily, Jimmy stood and headed out of the back door of his office. He stood there in the alleyway planning his next move. He could think of all the ways this could go wrong. He still could, of course, just gun the man down. But Ellie was right about that. If he did it, the legend would be reborn and he'd never truly be free of it.

Jimmy walked quietly down the alley so that he could come up behind the man who was still yelling in the street.

"I'm calling you out, Wild Bill! Unless you're yella! Wouldn't think that the great Wild Bill Hickok would turn coward! Come on out and face me, Bill!"

Jimmy sighed and rolled his eyes. This guy was making so much noise that Jimmy didn't even need to try to walk very quietly. Honestly, what he was about to do was a favor to the man. There were at least a dozen signs from the townspeople that Jimmy was coming up behind him and the man was so focused on his bluster that he didn't see them. If Jimmy had wanted to perpetuate the legend, the man would already be dead. Surely any other gunman would have shot him by now.

Everyone in town was on the street by this time and Jimmy thought it probably wasn't a good thing to have this much of an audience but then maybe it would teach this guy a lesson that might save his life someday.

Silently, Jimmy pulled one of his Colts from its holster and raised the firearm high before bringing the ivory handle down on the back of the young upstart's head. The man crumpled in the street.

"My name ain't Bill," Jimmy muttered under his breath as he looked up and spotted one of his deputies amid the relieved faces of the townsfolk.

"Pete," he called to the young man who'd served him well in the few months he'd been deputized. "Do me a favor and drag this bit of trash over to the jail. Let him spend the night in a cell and then maybe he'll be in more of a mood to get gone tomorrow."

* * *

Tears streaked the face of the man suspended from the ceiling of the cave. For a while he had tried to pull his knees up in an ill-fated attempt to shield himself at least a little but soon gave up. Now, after dangling there for an indeterminate amount of time, he lacked the strength to do much but hang limply from his wrists. His shoulders had given up hours before and he had heard the popping noises from them as they had separated completely. Were he to be cut down now, he knew he would lack use of his arms as they were no longer actually connected to his torso by anything but skin. He wasn't even sure how long that was going to hold.

His throat was dry and he swallowed trying to wet it enough with his own saliva to speak, to beg once more to just be cut loose. That was when he saw the man, the man who had only been a menacing shadowy figure pull a pistol and take aim.

"Please," he whispered. "Please…no."

A bitter laugh came from the shadowy figure.

"I wouldn't let you off so easy," the other man said as a shot rang out, echoing through the cave.

The man who had previously been suspended from the ceiling felt the hard ground connect with his feet, then his knees, and then the rest of his body. The acrid smell of gunpowder filled his nostrils and he blinked. He wasn't dead. He couldn't be dead and still feel the cold rock of the cave floor or smell the smoke or have the ringing in his ears from being so close to a gunshot. This man, whoever he was, had shot the rope that had held him up.

He'd been right about his arms. They were of absolutely no use to him. And his legs weren't much better. With some difficulty, he was able to curl into a ball on his side where he was met with the hard toe of a boot connecting sharply with his ribs. The pain that shot through him told him, in no uncertain terms, that his ribs were broken.

* * *

There was a time when Jimmy had nightmares. He had them every night—bad ones. But once Ellie came into his life, his sleep was undisturbed by monsters and ghosts. When he dreamt, the visions were happy. Even memories that might make him melancholy in the light of day seemed sweet and comforting as they came to him in slumber.

But in the days that followed his arrest of Jack Lawdor for disturbing the peace, Jimmy's dreams were a torturous affair.

Lawdor had been the one who'd called him out and had been adamant that Jimmy had gone coward in his refusal to face the challenge.

"I don't even know what you're talking about Lawdor," Jimmy had said with all his effort going into sounding unaffected by the ranting and the memories it stirred. "Ain't no man here by the name of Bill Hickok. As far as I know, there ain't never been a man by that name 'cept my pa and folks called him William, not Bill."

"Deny all you want, Wild Bill," Jack Lawdor had sneered. "I know who you are. And I aim to prove I'm better than you."

"Son," Jimmy had said with a sigh, a clear indication that his patience was at an end. "I'm telling you, you're chasing fairy tales. Someone next town over might be named Cinderella for all I know…don't make her the gal from the storybook."

"It's you," Lawdor said with a smug smile. "Maybe some of the stuff I heard is made up. But I don't figure it all is."

The next day Jimmy had let Lawdor go but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was no longer right in his life, that there hadn't been a right way to handle Lawdor. That was when the nightmares began.

He'd told Ellie what had happened in town and she had been so happy, so proud of him. He just couldn't help feeling that his past had finally caught up with him. He tried to hide the bad dreams but that first night that the nightmares had come, he woke once in her arms, staring up at her sweet face. She stroked his cheeks and whispered soothing words.

"Maybe we should move," he suggested in the light of another new day. We could go far away and I could change my name and no one would know. They'd have to stop looking then, wouldn't they?"

"Jimmy, you shouldn't have to live your life in hiding because someone else did something wrong," she had said resolutely. "Besides, I am in no shape to run right now."

He couldn't argue with that. She was due with the new little one any day and she was barely moving around enough to see after Aloysius. Jimmy decided he'd need to be extra diligent until after the baby was born and then maybe he could broach the subject again. Maybe he'd even just put his foot down and tell her that's what they were doing whether she liked it or not.

His determination did not stop the nightmares. If anything, the knowledge that he could do nothing for a time only served to make them worse.

Of course he couldn't even remember the dreams once awake but they left him feeling panicked.

* * *

"If you're going to kill me, just get it over with!" the man wailed from the floor of the cave. Now that the blood had returned to his arms, they were screaming with pain. He could not move them yet and wondered if he ever would again. But he could feel them.

"Nah," the shadowy figure looming over him replied. "Don't figure you get out of this so easy. Things you done…people you hurt…and for what?"

The last was bellowed and made the naked and shivering man on the floor jump.

"Wasn't for honor. Wasn't to make the world better. No…you destroyed people like they was all just your puppets to be played with and you did it for money, for your own gain."

"Yes…money," the battered man rasped. "I can pay you. You can have anything you want."

"I don't reckon I can. See, you had the power to take from me but you ain't got the power to give back what you took."

* * *

Jimmy woke with a start. He hadn't been dreaming at all but he woke with the same fear and panic as he did from the nightmares.

"Wakey, wakey Wild Bill," a voice taunted from the darkness and Jimmy could just make out the glint of the metal gun barrel pointed at him. He made a move to try to take the gun from the man.

"I wouldn't do that if I was you," the jeering voice cautioned as the man nudged Jimmy's head with the barrel of the gun so that he was looking toward Ellie's side of the bed. A lamp was turned up and Jimmy could clearly see another man holding Ellie around the neck and pressing a pistol to her temple.

"Jimmy," she whimpered.

"It's okay, Ellie honey," he tried to comfort. "I'll get us out of this."

"I don't really think that's going to happen," said the man holding the gun on Jimmy. Jimmy turned his head back and found himself looking into the enraged eyes of Jack Lawdor.

"Lawdor," he growled.

"You could've just handled this when you had the chance but you had to turn coward, Bill."

"Ain't nothing more cowardly than hiding behind a woman's skirts, Lawdor," Jimmy ground out between clenched teeth.

"Well, you'd know about that now, wouldn't you?"

Lawdor lifted his eyes to the struggling woman in his accomplice's arms.

"I have to say you found a right pretty woman to hide behind. Maybe she'd like to know what it's like being with a man what doesn't run from a fight. What do you say, Ellie? Time to be with a real man?"

"I've already had the finest man there is," she yelled back. "You're no man at all. You're just a slimy snake!"

Her words were bold but her body language betrayed her as her hands clutched desperately around her swollen middle.

"Oh don't you worry about that putting me off, darlin'," Lawdor said. "I think we can still have us a right good time."

Ellie's bravado left her quickly then.

"Please, no," she whispered grasping even tighter to her belly.

"Stay strong, Ellie," Jimmy soothed. "Stay strong."

Lawdor gave a nod and the man holding onto Ellie grabbed the neck of her nightgown and tore the garment open.

"Those sure are nice," Lawdor remarked. "How about you bring her a little closer to me, Lenny? Let me get my hands on that soft looking skin."

Jimmy tried to struggle but stopped when Lenny pulled the hammer back on the pistol in his hand. Lawdor grabbed Ellie and left Jimmy to sit on the bedside chair with Lenny's gun to his head.

Lawdor dragged Ellie to the bed and threw her onto it—too hard for her condition, in Jimmy's mind. He forced himself not to look away from what happened next. If she had to go through this, then he would go through it with her. If they made it out alive, he would not say he saved himself any pain when he couldn't save her.

Her screams, first of fear and then of pain, cut through him like a million tiny knives. It was then that the only thing that could have made the situation worse happened. Aloysius walked in, crying and calling for his mama. Lenny panicked at the sound of someone behind him and turned and fired without even looking. The boy dropped and never moved again.

Killing a child seemed to rattle Lenny and Jimmy took the opportunity to pounce on Lenny and try to get the gun from him. He successfully wrestled the firearm free only to hear a gunshot from the bed. Jimmy dropped Lenny where he stood, still shocked at having killed a small child, and then turned his attention to Lawdor climbing off from where he'd been on top of Ellie, his gun still smoking. Lawdor maybe thought there would be a showdown or some such nonsense but Jimmy wasn't going to give him that chance and shot him between the eyes.

Jimmy then rushed to Ellie and cradled her head tightly to him as he wove his fingers between hers where her hand rested over her belly. He could feel the baby moving inside.

"I'm sorry, Ellie," he whispered through tears he didn't even try to hide. He might've liked to have run for the doc but the size of the hole in her chest and the amount of blood told him that would only cost him these last few precious moments with her. "I'm so sorry."

"I love you, Jimmy," she said weakly as she lifted the hand not held by his to caress his face. "I've always loved you."

"I love you too, sweet girl," he choked out.

Her breath rattled and burbled around the blood in her chest.

"Stay true," she breathed with the last air in her. And then she was still. Jimmy felt the babe in her belly move one last time and then it too was motionless.

* * *

The battered man lay helplessly on the cold, hard cave floor. He had ceased noticing the cold in all of his joints a while back and no longer paid as much mind to the pain either. He was fairly certain he was to die there even if he didn't know why.

He watched absently as the shadowy man went through his belongings.

"Nice watch," the shadowy man remarked holding up the one inheritance from his father that his mother had made certain he got.

"It's yours," he choked out. He was not above bargaining. "Everything I have is yours."

The man in the shadows snorted a derisive laugh.

"Things," he said bitterly. "Just things. Ain't got use for things. Neither will you soon."

It was then that the man stepped out of the shadows and tipped his hat from his head. The face was familiar.

"Don't know me yet?" the man inquired. "You ought to remember me. Only the one book but I made you a fortune, Marcus."

"Hickok," Marcus whispered in awe. "I heard you made a break from the gunplay."

"Tried," Jimmy replied. "Did for a while. But there ain't really no getting free of what you do to a man. See…if stories just go by word of mouth, they die out when there ain't no new stories. But you went and wrote stuff down, didn't you? That never dies."

"I made you," Marcus said trying to brag and failing miserably at it.

"You cursed me," Jimmy spat back at him. "I made a stupid mistake. I was young and acted a fool. But you…you took the whole rest of my life from me. And you didn't just curse me. You cursed anyone who might be stupid enough to care for me. What you took from me…well, beg all you want but you can't give it back. They're gone now."

"They?"

"My family, Marcus. I was dumb enough to try to have a family like I was any other man. Like I wasn't the dead man you made me. My sweet Ellie. Her eyes were like the sky at twilight and her laugh was like a bird's song. And my boy…he had her eyes, you know. Deep blue just like his mama. Scowled a little too much like his pa. Would've liked to at least have met the one she was carrying. They told me it was a girl."

"You can't possibly blame me for that," Marcus protested weakly.

"Can't I? I admit it was me being foolish to think I could pretend the legend didn't exist. But you're the one who made it in the first place. It wasn't even my name he called out in the street. It was the one you made up."

"I could write a new story," Marcus pleaded. "I could write the death of Wild Bill. You could be free."

"Day late and a dollar short, ain't you?" Jimmy asked distantly. That ain't going to bring 'em back."

"Killing me won't either."

"Maybe not but it's justice anyway. That's the law, ain't it? You kill someone and you die for it. You killed me and you killed my family. Now you die."

Jimmy walked calmly to where the pathetic man was curled on his side.

"This is for an old friend who damned near got hung by someone wanting to call me out," Jimmy said as he leveled the gun and fired into Marcus' right knee. The man screamed in pain.

"And this is for a lady whose name I didn't even know who just happened to walk into another gunfight."

That bullet went into Marcus' left knee.

"This one's for the people I care about that I can't even go near for fear they'll end up pawns to get to me."

There was a garbled half scream as the bullet went into the man's lung.

"This is for every lonely night, every Christmas that I was away from anyone who had a kind thought for me, every meal eaten in solitude."

Marcus' breath was shallow and ragged as the bullet pierced his other lung.

"And this…this is for my daughter. We'd've named her Polly after my ma. And it's for my boy. Aloysius. He was just four years old. And for my Ellie. My sweet Ellie who honestly thought that turning into a good man would be enough to keep the bad ones away."

There was not another sound from Marcus as the blood trickled from the hole in the middle of his forehead.

Jimmy's shoulders slumped. He was tired. He'd had Marcus in this cave for three days and before that it had been months of looking to track the man down. Now he was just dog tired and weary to his bones. His hands hung limp at his sides and his legs suddenly lacked the power to keep him upright. He sagged to his knees and then he was lying on the ground next to Marcus' corpse.

Tears came. They fell onto the blessedly cool, hard ground. Tears he hadn't cried at the funeral for Ellie and Aloysius, tears he held back when the letter expressing love and sympathy came from Emma…they flowed freely now and he cried and screamed and wailed and pounded his fists on the ground until he was utterly exhausted. Then he slept.

His dreams were not haunted for the first time since Jack Lawdor had come to town and called him out. They were sweet and free. He was at a table in a grand room with a feast laid out before him. Everyone he had ever loved was there. His sisters and their children, Teaspoon, Rachel, Emma and Sam. The rest of his family from the Express. Kid and Lou and Buck and Cody. Noah was there too and Ike. And there was his boy, his pride and joy, his Aloysius. And Ellie. Beautiful Ellie with a bundled babe in her arms and a warm smile gracing her face.

It was perfect. It was warm and happy and as it always should have been. He woke in near pitch darkness and looked around. There was still the limp body of the man who had taken everything from him over a slight, over a stupid youthful mistake. And he still had his Colt in his hand. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness and pulled in more light from the nearly full moon, he studied the weapon as if he'd never seen it before. As if he hadn't cleaned it every single day.

He turned it over in his hands and studied the engraving on the ivory handle, the glint of the steel in the moonlight. The perfect round circle of the end of the barrel, the way he could watch the next round settle into the chamber as he brought the hammer back. The cylinder had been full when he'd fired the first shot into Marcus' knee. There was just one left now. His brow furrowed as he pondered.

He'd never really thought about what he would do once his quest for justice was at an end. He supposed he could go where no one knew him and use a different name. He could go to Omaha and see if Sam needed any help. He could but neither of those options felt right.

Keeping his eyes trained on the flawless circle of the end of the barrel, he knew that only one thing felt right.

"I'll be right there, Ellie," he whispered into the darkness. "I'll be right there."

* * *

**Hello there. Yeah...this bunny bit and wouldn't let go. I didn't think that's how it would end but really there was no other way. I guess just let me know what you think.-J**

* * *

**Bullet with Butterfly Wings** – Smashing Pumpkins (Billy Corgan)

The world is a vampire, sent to drain  
Secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames  
And what do I get, for my pain  
Betrayed desires, and a piece of the game  
Even though I know-I suppose I'll show  
All my cool and cold-like old job

Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage  
despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage  
Someone will say what is lost can never be saved  
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage

Now I'm naked, nothing but an animal  
But can you fake it, for just one more show  
And what do you want, I want change  
And what have you got  
When you feel the same  
Even though I know-I suppose I'll show  
All my cool and cold-like old job

Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage  
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage  
Someone will say what is lost can never be saved  
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage

Tell me I'm the only one  
Tell me there's no other one  
Jesus was an only son yeah  
Tell me I'm the chosen one  
Jesus was an only son for you

Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage  
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage  
Someone will say what is lost can never be saved  
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage

Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a  
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a  
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage

Tell me I'm the only one  
Tell me there's no other one  
Jesus was an only son for you

And I still believe that I cannot be saved


End file.
